Marketing is all about making your brand (and your products) more visible to a wider audience. For decades, it referred to a series of intensive, action-based, outbound tactics designed to grab new consumers’ attentions. Advertising was almost synonymous with marketing, and marketers constantly searched for new ways to go out and grab new customers.

Many of these tactics, such as direct mail marketing, TV ads, and radio spots can still be effective, but the best marketing strategy today isn’t even really marketing at all. Instead of focusing on reaching out to buyers, it’s about letting buyers come to you, while maximizing their ability to do so—a reversal of the natural order that both brands and consumers can find acceptable.

So why has modern marketing deviated so far from the traditional model, and how can you take advantage of this?